We all know sugar’s the reason we’re all here. Well, there were also cotton and coffee, but other countries were lower-cost producers, and we were stuck with sugar. But sugar was viable only because of immigrant indentureds accepting abysmal wages and living conditions – with the chairman of Bookers once pointed out that the stables for the plantations’ mules were more habitable that the workers’ logies!!
Cheddi Jagan – who fought for sugar workers – spoke about “bitter sugar”.
The bitterness increased exponentially when the PNC/AFC coalition slid into power in 2015, and David Granger shuttered four of the eight sugar plantations and threw 7000 sugar workers into the streets!! Some have questioned this number, since the fired workers from GuySuCo numbered only around 5000, but what’s conveniently forgotten is that private farmers were by then supplying almost 30% of canes to the factories – and their workers also lost their jobs!!
Anyhow, since the PPP returned to office in 2020 – to a large part because Granger shot the PNC in both feet with their sugar policy! – they’ve been fulfilling their promise to get the industry back on ITS feet. The PNC sees this move as PPP pandering to the sugar workers who’d traditionally supported them. They maintain that the entire industry should be shuttered. In all fairness to them, we are a high-cost producer, and it’s been long recognised that we gotta bring down costs.
But this is exactly what GuySuCo’s been doing for 20 years, and the Skeldon Modernisation Plan was a key element in the strategy. Unfortunately, Booker Tate didn’t satisfy their management oversight duties, and the factory never fulfilled its promise. But the PPP is betting on the truism that there are many ways to skin a cat – AND make sugar profitable. On reducing costs, there has been a huge mechanization shift into tilling, planting and reaping the sugar cane – with aerial spraying of fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides being done by drones in the offing!!
But it’s said that, if you can’t lower the river, maybe you can raise the bridge?!! And this is also part of GuySuCo’s strategy: while lowering production costs, they figure they can raise the price folks will pay for our brown sugar!! Just packaging it in sachets was tried and tested – and a new packaging facility will be opened at Albion to replace the one closed down at Enmore. Then yesterday Pressie made an earth- shattering announcement: a private investor wants to set up a sugar refinery here!!!
This is historic, since, from the beginning, 300 years ago, our brown sugar was shipped to Europe, where they refined it and sold it for several times their buying price!!
At long last, we might be able to have the sweet from sugar!!
…Jamaican Kulcha!!
Can you believe Bob Marley – Brother Bob to the world – would’ve been just 78 last Tuesday if cancer hadn’t taken him from us in 1981?? That’s right…this prophet of emancipation was just 36 when he transitioned to the ancestral spirits. He must be regaling them with his music – all shrouded in the smoke of some good Jamaican Gold!! By 1965 – when he was just 20 – he, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer had debuted with “One Love”, which shot them to worldwide fame!! We hadn’t even gotten independence, and here was this young man who grabbed the attention of the world!!
One love, one heart/ Let’s get together and feel all right/ Hear the children crying (One love)/ Hear the children crying (One heart)/ Sayin’, “Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right.”/ Sayin’, “Let’s get together and feel all right.” Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa
Let’s get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (One love)/ So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (One song)
